Hair replacement systems, such as custom hair pieces, are important to many individuals that will lose, are losing, or have lost naturally growing hair. Preparing such systems can be time-intensive because custom hair pieces typically must be personally configured to fit a particular individual's head and area(s) of hair loss. Presently, businesses that offer custom hair replacement systems manually design and specify hair pieces intended to cover areas of a specific customer's head by creating a mold template of the customer's head and outlining the specific areas to be covered before actually building the specified hair piece.
To build a hair piece using the known methods, first, the customer's head, or relevant portions thereof, is tightly wrapped in a plastic wrap, or alternatively a “mold cap” designed for this purpose, which is then covered in sufficient adhesive tape or other similar means as to enable the wrapping to retain the shape of the head when removed. Next, the area to be covered by the hair piece is outlined on the head covering using an ink-based marker, and other instructions related to hair color, pattern, texture and other necessary data are marked as appropriate. The head covering is then removed and the excess is trimmed, resulting in a mold template.
The mold template, along with a completed paper form with any additional information and specifications, including identifying data, is sent by package-delivery, either directly to a remote factory or, more commonly, to an intermediary distributor who then sends the information to a factory for the manufacture of the final product.
This method, while it has been in use for many years, entails significant expense in shipping, and can result in delays before the instructions get to the manufacturer, ultimately delaying delivery to a customer. Delays in customs and occasional losses of packages by shipping companies are also hazards of this method. Further, templates prepared by this method can represent a storage burden and can be sufficiently imprecise as to cause or allow imperfections in the shape of the final product, necessitating remanufacturing, causing additional delays and expense.
The need exists in the art for a system and method of creating custom hair pieces that cuts down on delay, and is more precise than the previous systems and methods.